A few more football-related paragraphs (blame it on MGoBlog)

Brian is using some of his spare time to consider our football team’s plight.  His main point is quickly conceded, as it’s a point I’ve made repeatedly over the last three months: This is fundamentally a 7-6 football team, not a 9-4 one.  He goes on to cite the following quote from an Atlanta blog, Braves & Birds:

Mark Dantonio is Jim Tressel without the talent base. Exhibit A: punting in the first quarter on 4th and 1 from the Georgia 39. Exhibit B: an offense built around running the same guy over and over between the tackles. (At least Tressel came out of the dark ages with Troy Smith.) Exhibit C: a kicker who attempted 25 field goals this year. Exhibit D: an on-field personna that makes Ben Stein’s character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off look like Sam Kinison. With the way Dantonio’s team approaches offense, I’m constantly reminded of the Japanese officer who said in 1944 that Japan didn’t need radar because its soldiers could see perfectly well.

In terms of the specifics cited, I’ll concede to Exhibits A and B.  I complained about A yesterday and B earlier in the year.  But we’re missing some important context here.

Regarding A, Dantonio’s actually been fairly aggressive on fourth down this season–in several cases, even more aggressive than I would have preferred (example: going for it on 4th and 1 from the 10 against Purdue, up 7-0 at the end of the 2nd quarter).  MSU was third among the seven bowl eligible Big Ten teams in fourth-down conversion attempts during the regular season with 12.  (Bad teams tend to go for it more often because they’re usually trailing.)  And last season, MSU ranked 2nd in the entire conference in fourth-down conversion attempts with 19.  So yesterday’s conservative calls on fourth down (after the failed fake punt) are not part of a long-term pattern.

Regarding B, the offense was, in fact, on the conservative side of the ideal aggressiveness-conservatism equilibrium this season.  But that’s partly a function of the personnel available.  Last year, when Devin Thomas and Kellen Davis were around, the offense was pretty wide open, averaging 30.2 pass attempts and 33.1 points per game.  This year, those kind of weapons weren’t available, and those weapons that were available spent a lot of time banged up (Mark Dell, in particular).

From a bigger-picture perspective, the primary piece of context that’s missing is that this is only Dantonio’s second season.  Imagine a world where we did, in fact, go 7-6 this season.  That’d be two seven-win regular seasons to start Dantonio’s tenure in East Lansing.  (Let’s ignore the fact they lost all their close games last year, meaning Dantonio’s overall regular season record of 16-8 is probably pretty accurate in terms of the program’s overall performance the last two seasons.)

Those results are building off a team that won just one Big Ten game the season prior to Dantonio’s arrival.  Ironically, I think most Michigan fans would be happy with a seven-win season in Rich Rodriguez’ second season, building off a team that won six Big Ten games in Lloyd Carr’s final season.  (The departure of Michigan’s entire offense is conceded.  Of course, the 2006 MSU team lost Drew Stanton–who practically was our entire offense.)  If Dantonio had won just five games in his first season, which was a reasonable prediction, this season’s results would look even better than they already do.

(I realize I haven’t gotten to exhibits C and D yet.  Regarding C: Again, Dantonio was pretty aggressive on fourth down this season.  So a lot of field goal attempts is probably a good sign, on balance.  Regarding the persona-part of D: So what?  And I’ve already addressed the offensive-philosophy part of D.)

Brian’s concluding sentence:

At best he makes Michigan State into a Wisconsin or Iowa level program, and even that seems pretty doubtful.

There are, of course, no guarantees that any coach is going to get any college football program to a certain level, but it’s unclear what exactly Brian’s standard is for Dantonio to be judged as a success to date in terms of moving MSU into the upper echelon of the conference.  He’s won the games he’s supposed to win, despite the core of the team still being guys recruited by the previous coach for a different system.  And he’s doing a pretty good job locking up in-state talent for the future, as far as I can tell.

Wait a minute.  Boring offensive philosophy designed to avoid upsets?  No personality?  Recruiting focus on in-state talent?

Hey, that formula worked pretty well in Ann Arbor for a few years, didn’t it?

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Pregame Reading

• Suton’s absence could help Spartans in long run
  Not helping our NCAA Tournament seed.
• Alcorn State facing constant battles as Division I have-not
  Tearjerker.  (Hat tip: Fighting With a Vim.)
• Two local recruits closing in on their college decisions
  Dion Sims is down to MSU, Ohio State, and Miami.  Dantonio and Izzo say he can play both sports.  Assume he’d enroll on a football scholarship and be a preferred walk-on for basketball?
• President says MSU keen on keeping Dantonio
  I hope she didn’t really say “keen.”
• Gus Johnson Ringtones
  Superb concept, but they need to get the right to actual play-by-play calls he’s made.  (Hat tip: Football Outsiders.)

There’s ten hours of basketball coverage on BTN today.  Ohio State-Butler at noon is probably the best match-up.

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Dantonio's Double Timeout

Against, my better judgment, allow me to weigh in on the Mark Dantonio double-timeout controversy.  (I’m still trying my best to finally take advantage of that “be controversial to increase your blog’s traffic” advice I read somewhere.)

Adam Rittenberg summarizes the facts of the case:

Leading 42-7 entering the fourth quarter, Penn State continued to attack downfield as backup quarterback Pat Devlin threw a 59-yard touchdown pass to Deon Butler. Then, with Michigan State down 31 points in the closing minute, Spartans head coach Mark Dantonio called two timeouts with nine seconds left, making Penn State wait a little longer before beginning its Rose Bowl celebration.

The key points, in my book, are (1) the game was “entering the fourth quarter” and (2) the backup quarterback was in the game.  Penn State took possession of the ball at the beginning of the fourth quarter.  Regardless of the score, you cannot expect any college football team to start running the ball into the line with a full quarter of a football game remaining.  Like almost any team would in the same situation, Penn State chose to use the time remaining to get its backup quarterback (and next year’s starting quarterback) some more snaps in a game situation.  On a 3rd-and-6 play, Devlin saw a receiver open downfield and threw the ball.  You can hardly expect the Nittany Lion coaches to tell him to run the offense, but not to throw the ball if he sees a receiver open deep.

When asked whether the two timeouts he called with 9 seconds left were in retaliation to the final Penn State touchdown pass, Dantonio said the following:

“There’s no motivation there. I think the problem was earlier in the game. I was just trying to give our guys a rest.”

By any objective standard, Mark Dantonio has had phenomenal success in his first two seasons as MSU’s coach.  He took a team that finished 4-8 two years ago and has proceeded to compile a record of 16-9 to date.  Ironically, though, this incident, coupled with the exchange through the media with Mike Hart after last year’s loss to Michigan, has created the risk that Dantonio is going to get stuck with the label of “bad loser.”  The reply above is obviously intended to confirm that he was indeed upset with the Penn State coaches.  Why else would he make a reference to “earlier in the game”?  And the “give our guys rest” part is nonsensical.  There were nine seconds left; one timeout is certainly sufficient to rest for a meaningless Hail Mary attempt.

I realize I’ve strayed outside standard college sports blogger territory here by taking issue with something my own team’s coach did, but I think this point is worth making: Don’t risk damaging the winning attitude you’re creating within the MSU football program by letting your emotions during/after a bad loss get the best of you.

I appreciate that Dantonio has put an emphasis on (1) playing with passion and (2) focusing on our rivals (Michigan and now, apparently, Penn State).  But there are better ways to go about it.  If Dantonio wants to get the team emotionally charged up for next year’s game against the Nittany Lions, I’d suggest showing them tape of MSU’s secondary getting burned for multiple long touchdowns, rather than focusing on a manufactured sportsmanship protocol violation.

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Two Links for Tuesday

Big Ten Geeks have their preview for MSU up.  Travis Walton gets some back-handed compliments.

There’s a new magazine on local sports in the Lansing area called (appropriately) “Sport.”  The first issue is available for free preview (hat tip: Joe Rexrode).  There’s a good piece by Jack Ebling on the new found continuity in the MSU athletic department (starts on page 16).  Key quote:

MSU has had three head coaches in basketball in the last 39 seasons (Gus Ganakas, Jud Heathcote and Izzo). And it has had three hockey leaders in the last 57 years (Amo Bessone, Ron Mason and Rick Comley).

Compare that stability with coup d’etatstyle turnover in the president’s office, the A.D. chair and the football program. With nine presidents, 11 A.D.s and 10 head football coaches in the past 40 years, MSU has averaged a change in one of those jobs every 1.4 seasons.

Hopefully, Mark Dantonio and Mark Hollis pull that figure up over the next decade.

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